Making Human-Centred Decisions

What is human-centred design? Ultimately, it’s bringing people into the strategy & decision-making process. Organisations that navigate change and uncertainty best tend to stay deeply human-centred. They make decisions based on evidence of real people needs, preferences and behaviours, not just individual assumptions. 

What I see time and time again is that organisations that do well are intentional about how they make decisions. They know why they’re making them, what they’re trying to achieve, and who those decisions are really for. 

When we anchor our work in things that matter, our decisions become clearer. And what matters most at the end of the day is people. Making human-centred decisions is a business strategy. It’s about focusing on solving real problems for the people who use our products or services, not just optimising for internal convenience or short-term outputs. 

Anchoring Decisions in Evidence 

Human-centred leaders need to be clear about why the work exists, why it matters, and have the courage to be explicit about what it is and is not, here to do. At the heart of this clarity is a simple question: What problems are we solving for people?  

Grounding decisions in real human needs creates focus and meaning. It provides an anchor that helps teams stay steady, even as strategies, structures, and priorities evolve. More importantly, it makes it very clear what not to do, helping to shift the paradigm of busy culture towards performance culture.  

In many organisations, decisions are still driven by hierarchy or the loudest voice in the room. Human-centred organisations do better because they are deliberate about decision-making. They are clear on why a decision is being made, what outcome it is trying to achieve, and have the evidence to support it.   

For example, imagine you’re trying to increase the uptake of a particular product on your website. Instead of guessing why sales might be slow, you can look at customer usage data. This data allows you to see exactly where people drop off or where engagement spikes and is the evidence that allows you to test specific changes rather than relying on gut feel.  

During my time as a CX designer, I’ve seen many restructures and redundancies. What I’ve noticed about the organisations and leaders who weather these periods best is that they make smart decisions based on evidence rather than assumptions. This clarity helps teams prioritise, make trade-offs, and avoid spreading themselves thin. 

Human-Centred Data 

Organisational performance is often measured through outputs: financial results, delivery milestones, and efficiency metrics. But performance is largely driven by inputs, which commonly comes from your staff and customers.  

Leaders who practise human-centred leadership question norms, listen deeply, and stay close to lived experience. They recognise that data isn’t just numbers on a dashboard; it’s insight into human behaviour. What does this look like in practice? 

• Dara Khosrowshahi (CEO of Uber) has driven for Uber and Uber Eats himself to experience firsthand what drivers and riders go through, helping him surface real issues and challenge assumptions. 

• Melanie Perkins (co-founder and CEO of Canva)’s entire business model is based on experiencing a customer problem first-hand. While tutoring students on design software, she realised that existing tools were unnecessarily complex and expensive 

• Wade Foster (CEO of Zapier) spends time each week in the company’s contact centre making support calls, staying connected to customer frustrations and needs. 

• Sharon Price Jones (CEO of Build-A-Bear) realised the value of emotional connection. She regularly encourages her staff to ask: Is this on brand? Does it serve customers? Is it backed by data? Insights and feedback from customer stories help the brand refine the customer’s experience. 

• John Solheim (CEO of PING) regularly works on the production line to maintain a real understanding of operational realities and customer demand. 

There is genuine value in experiencing your product or service the way your customers do. This is where meaningful insights surface that help leaders make decisions that are impactful, ambitious, and deeply human. It challenges blind spots, tests assumptions, and keeps leadership grounded in reality. 

And even when outcomes aren’t what you hoped for, a human-centred approach allows organisations to learn, adapt, and improve. 

Staying Human-Centred Is a Business Strategy 

What makes an organisation high performing over time isn’t just its outputs, but the behaviours and rituals it sustains to achieve them. A desire to do well and to do better than others ultimately come down to the quality of decisions leaders make. 

When decisions genuinely meet user needs, and when employees are involved in the design of solutions, especially those with a direct line to customers, organisations uncover insights that leadership alone can easily miss. That is what it means to make smart human-centred decisions and why people should be part of your business strategy. 

This is where Reframr comes in. At Reframr, we help organisations make better decisions through human-centred design. We work alongside leaders and teams to uncover real customer and employee insights, design evidence-based solutions, and build the capability to keep people at the centre of your strategy and processes.   

If you want to improve how decisions are made in your organisation, Reframr can help you reframe the problem and make decisions based on evidence, not just assumptions.  

Let’s talk. I’m Sarah, the Managing Director of Reframr. If you’ve got questions about how your business can become more human-centred, give me a call on 022 1607 024.